Smoking age same as the age to get drafted

Dave Martin / AP

A cigarette burns in an ashtray at a home (AP Photo/Dave Martin).

A cigarette burns in an ashtray at a home (AP Photo/Dave Martin). (Dave Martin / AP)

As I read letters on both sides of the issue as to whether 18-year-olds should or should not be allowed to die, smoke, drink, vote, etc., I would like to recall the reason we set 18 as that limit (“Kids and tobacco,” Jan. 2).

Many years ago when I was 18, I watched far too many of my peers be plucked off the streets and conscripted into the military so that they could travel half way around the world to fight in some God forsaken country that most of us had never heard of. It was for the sole purpose of expanding the military industrial complex and was presented to the public as a last chance effort to save the world from Communism.

The bottom line is that war was the first one the United States ever lost, and in spite of that most of the world is still free from Communism, which is what led me to my above stated opinion. I watched too many of my high school friends come home in body bags or maimed for life as a result of this war.

It was determined that if 18 was old enough to die for this country it is certainly old enough to do all those other adult things too.